


and the rest be sent to hell

by endquestionmark



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Character Turned Into Vampire, Choking, Consent Issues, Dark, F/M, M/M, Multi, Temporary Character Death, Vampire Sex, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2103048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You ready?” Dallon asks Brendon, backstage. The lights are down and the crowd is screaming as if it’s their last day on earth, and the stage is wreathed in smoke, and it’s like being born again, every single time.</p><p>“Yeah,” Brendon says, running a hand through his hair, shaking out his shoulders to make his jacket sit easier. “Ready if you are.”</p><p>Dallon nods, satisfied, and they step out to a roar of noise, the surge of the crowd.</p><p>Later, Brendon remembers this exchange. Later, he wonders about it. Later, of course, it is too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the rest be sent to hell

**Author's Note:**

> A character is turned into a vampire against their will and another is turned having given uninformed consent; kink is not negotiated; sex is dubiously consensual at very best and consent is not discussed at all, hence the general warning for rape/noncon. Multiple characters are (temporarily) murdered; there is graphic violence and a lot of blood and general abuse and abusive dynamics and manipulation. Also choking. See tags for other warnings.
> 
> Written in parallel with [Rachel's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringrachel) vampire fic, both of which were written after we went to the Gospel Tour and took part in basically a musical bacchanal.

“You ready?” Dallon asks Brendon, backstage. The lights are down and the crowd is screaming as if it’s their last day on earth, and the stage is wreathed in smoke, and it’s like being born again, every single time.

“Yeah,” Brendon says, running a hand through his hair, shaking out his shoulders to make his jacket sit easier. “Ready if you are.”

Dallon nods, satisfied, and they step out to a roar of noise, the surge of the crowd.

Later, Brendon remembers this exchange. Later, he wonders about it. Later, of course, it is too late.

++

They’re on the bus. Kenneth’s up front, making a phone call; Dallon is sprawled on the couches in the rear lounge; Brendon is sitting in his bunk, hunched over, kicking at the wall.

“Would you want to live forever?” Dallon says, apropos of very little, the way he does many things. Brendon takes it in stride.

“Do I age?” he says, in lieu of answering. “Don’t want to lose the moneymaker.”

Dallon lazily lobs a pillow at his head. Brendon catches it just before it connects.

“Let’s say you don’t age,” Dallon says. “Just keep on living through anything. Yes? No?”

“Of course,” Brendon says. “Who wouldn’t?”

“You’d lose a lot of people along the way,” Dallon points out.

“I’ve lost a fuckton of people already,” Brendon says. “I seem to be getting on just fine.”

Kenneth wanders through. “What are we talking about?” he says.

“Living forever,” Brendon says. “Yay? Nay?”

“Not on your life,” Kenneth says. “I’d be bored out of my mind.”

“Small mind,” Brendon says, because it’s been a long night and he’s not in the mood for niceties.

“An appreciation of the small things,” Kenneth counters.

“Guess that answers your question,” Dallon says, and at Brendon’s confused look, clarifies. “Kenneth wouldn’t.”

“Kenneth’s loss,” Brendon says, and gives Kenneth a shit-eating grin. Dallon smiles, almost — proud? Brendon can’t place his expression. Kenneth shrugs and wanders out again; Brendon throws the pillow back at Dallon. The night progresses.

++

“You ready?” Dallon asks Brendon, backstage. Across the stage he can see Kenneth, lurking in the shadows; in the pit, he can see hands outstretched as though in supplication.

“Born ready,” Brendon says, because this script is getting old.

Dallon nods, satisfied, and looks at Brendon for what feels like a long time but must be a matter of seconds.

“After you,” Brendon says, gesturing extravagantly.

They step out.

++

After the show, Dallon says, “Can we talk?”

They linger backstage till most of the crew has filtered away, and Dallon draws them away into a corner. Kenneth is gone. It’s very quiet, only the residual shuffling of gear cutting through the deafening silence of a nearly-empty arena, muttering from the stragglers and lights clicking off.

“You’re ready,” Dallon says.

“Ready to go,” Brendon quips, and then: “Wait —”

Dallon bites him, just under the jaw, and Brendon feels his life rip open. There’s warm liquid running down his throat, and Dallon is — lapping at him, swallowing, teeth buried in his flesh.

It’s agony. It’s the best thing Brendon has ever felt. His hands come up and he pushes, vaguely, at Dallon’s shoulders, tries to get a hand in Dallon’s hair and pull, but his fingers are cold, and he can’t quite get a grip — the world is swimming, blurry, and he feels weak at the knees, which has got to be shock. He feels as though he is slipping out of his skin, losing the sensation of liquid spurting over his collarbone, everywhere. Dallon raises his face and it’s as if he’s been sprayed with red, and his teeth — _what sharp teeth you have_ , Brendon thinks, in his final moments of lucidity.

Dallon looks _dangerous_. He looks _hungry_. Brendon feels as though he might be sick, but the agony is slipping away now, and the world is smearing into clots of color, and this is going to be a hell of a mess, he thinks, blood everywhere, on the floor, pooling in his collarbone and slipping down his chest. His ribcage hurts very badly, and his throat feels torn, and it feels so good, and he _wants_ — and then, mercifully, the world slips away, colors desaturating, and Brendon ceases to be, and everything is very dark and very quiet except the tugging at his neck, and then even that is gone.

++

Brendon wakes up because his throat is working. Brendon does not expect to wake up but he does, and he is ravenously hungry, and every inch of his body hurts with a horrible all-encompassing ache, the sort that is too sharp to be from overuse, and he realizes then that the taste in his mouth is metal.

Dallon has his wrist pressed to Brendon’s mouth. Brendon is licking at a gash along the underside, longitudinal and deep.

Brendon scrambles back. “What the _fuck_ ,” he says, as soon as he’s wiped the back of his hand along his mouth. It comes away red. There’s something in his mouth — extra teeth, protrusions, something — and it feels crowded, the words coming out strange.

“You said you were ready,” Dallon says, “come on, don’t get blood everywhere,” and all right, that’s right, this is happening. This is really happening. Brendon feels something horrible and empty settling into the pit of his stomach.

“Ready for _what?_ ” he demands.

“To be turned,” Dallon says, “come on, you’re not telling me you didn’t know —” and then it settles into _his_ eyes, recognition and resignation. “Oh, don’t tell me you fucked this up.”

“ _I_ fucked this up?” Brendon says, an edge of panic creeping into his voice. “ _Me?_ Come on, you’re kidding, this isn’t real. This isn’t happening, you’re fucking with me, come _on_ —”

Dallon sighs, with real feeling, mostly exasperation by the sound of it. “It’s happening,” he says, and raises his eyebrows. “I mean, I guess you _weren’t_ ready, but it’s definitely happening. Come on,” he adds, and tilts his head back, baring the side of his neck. “You’re too weak to argue.”

Brendon moves almost without realizing, and that hurts too, and his head spins and he nearly screams in pain. “I can’t,” he says, and then repeats it in horror. “I _can’t_.”

“Come on,” Dallon says, something dangerous in his voice, and Brendon closes his eyes and grits his teeth and _crawls_ — the squeak of the couches, are they in the back lounge? They must be; how long was he out; how long has he been like this — and finally Dallon takes mercy on him, lifts him into his lap and cups his face, and Brendon presses his mouth to Dallon’s neck, breaks the skin with a tilt of his head, and drinks.

It’s better than sex, which is saying something. It warms Brendon up, and he feels heat pool low in his abdomen, and he licks at Dallon’s neck and feels himself getting hard, which _still fucking hurts_ , and it’s so good and so awful Brendon thinks he might be sick. Brendon drinks and drinks and drinks until the flush is gone from Dallon’s skin, and Dallon’s eyes have fallen closed, lashes fluttering slightly, and Brendon is so fucking hard and so fucking warm.

Dallon’s hand has fallen to Brendon’s lap, and he pushes the heel of his hand against Brendon’s too-tight leather pants — still on after all this, rust-colored splatters marring the shine — almost as if he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t let up when Brendon gasps for more.

Brendon doesn’t want this. It makes his stomach turn and he wants to close his eyes, but it also makes his breath catch, and there’s a whisper in the back of his head telling him to _shut up, shut up and take it, be good_ , and he does. He takes it and he whimpers and his hips twitch and he comes in his pants from the pressure of Dallon’s hand, and Dallon looks at him with absolutely nothing in his eyes as he gasps through it, and keeps going afterwards, when he’s too sensitive, and Brendon shoves him away this time, pushes his hand away.

Dallon leaves him there, blood sticky on his mouth and a mess in his pants, cooling uncomfortably, and lets the door slam, and Brendon sits there, trying to will away the whisper that says that next time, he should be better, he should take it better, and then he scrambles to the bathroom and retches until his ribs are sore and his stomach is empty.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dallon says, eyebrows raised. “You’ll have to wait until next feeding, unless you go out and find some fan who wants to let you have your way with them.” He pauses. “Which you could do. I wouldn’t be disappointed.”

And Brendon could do it, is the hell of the thing, without any difficulty at all. He and Sarah have always had an agreement about people on the side, a very liberal one, and it wouldn’t be hard at all. But he gets the sense that Dallon knows this, and that Dallon also knows that Brendon would come crawling back, led by that whisper and by some ineffable tug at the center of his breastbone.

“Progenitor bond’s a hell of a thing,” Dallon says, finally, when Brendon has thought about it long enough, kneeling in the bathroom, for his knees to get really sore, and for the beginnings of the body-wide agonizing ache to creep back in, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the satisfaction in Dallon’s voice.

“What?” he rasps, instead.

“I made you,” Dallon says, no small amount of pride visible on his face. “So — hmmmm. So I get to keep you, I suppose.”

 _Be better be better be better_ , Brendon thinks, the whisper and his conscious voice almost merged, and he goes to get to his feet and stumbles, and Dallon catches him, hands under his shoulders, letting him dangle there until he screws his eyes shut and gets his legs underneath himself, and then Dallon heaves him off, lets him lean on the wall.

“Don’t fuck up,” he says. “Later.”

“Later,” Brendon says, on autopilot, and realizes a reply wasn’t needed when Dallon looks at him, freezing him in place, and says nothing, bowing his head instead.

 _Be better_. _I get to keep you_.

Brendon feels raw and scraped open, not just the burn in his throat from nausea but something deeper and more elemental. He’d be lying if he said it was completely unpleasant, but then he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to give it all back, whatever it is he has now, to undo it and unmake it and unmake himself as he is now.

 _Be better_ , the whisper sounds, louder, and Brendon stumbles back to his bunk — where’s Kenneth? Where are they, how long have they been driving — and curls up, even that much movement making his muscles scream, and shakes, and tries very hard not to think.

++

Brendon wakes up and he can’t move.

“I told you so,” Dallon says. Kenneth must be in the front, or maybe he has headphones in. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe no matter what there isn’t any help to be had. The light slanting through the door is oblique and golden, late — they have a day off, but then the show must go on, and Brendon wonders vaguely if he’ll ever be able to perform again. “Don’t fuck up again,” Dallon goes on, and presses his wrist to Brendon’s mouth.

Brendon turns his head away. Dallon gives him a look. “Don’t fuck up,” he says again, _be better_ , and Brendon wants to turn further, wants to roll into the corner where the bunk meets the wall, but he doesn’t, he can’t, and that’s what he thinks as his fangs fold down, as he opens Dallon’s wrist with a quick slash. Cede territory and live to fight another day.

The whisper is soothing now, like syrup, slow and sweet, and Brendon makes a sound under his breath, satisfied against his will.

“Good,” Dallon says, and withdraws his wrist, licking over the wound. It seals.

 _Good_ , Brendon thinks, and through the haze of satiated hunger knows that something is terribly wrong, but he’s good, _good_ , and he can’t bring himself to care or know what, precisely —

It hits him all at once, when the satisfaction begins to ebb, and there’s blood cooling on his lips, and he wants to be sick, but it doesn’t hurt as badly when he’s full, and he can move again, and he hates every second of it. He doesn’t wish he was dead, precisely, but — how will he explain to Sarah, how will he perform — and that’s almost as bad, almost as paralyzing as the agony was to begin with.

Abstractly he notes that he’s turned on, arches up against empty air, and loathes himself for it. He licks the blood out of the corner of his lips and holds it in his mouth while he jerks off — still painful, not as bad though, and if he tries he can almost pretend it’s _good_ — and comes with copper on his tongue, gasping out a breath he’s not sure he needs anymore.

 _Good_. Brendon can be good. Brendon can do that. Perversely, Brendon _wants_ to be good; usually he tries to at least put up a fight, make it something to be won. Death seems to have changed that. Brendon wants to kneel at Dallon’s feet and rub against his thigh, wants Dallon to run a hand through his hair, wants to bite the big artery on the inside of Dallon’s thigh, and he wants Dallon to slap him for his audacity. He wants to be good in a very particular way, but he also wants to strip away everything Dallon has ever loved, ruin his undeath as Dallon ruined his.

He wipes his hand on a t-shirt and rolls over, instead, and tries to sleep away this new lease on life as the sun dips lower. There’s red smeared on his sheets and his pillow and the metallic smell of blood is all around, and he buries his face in the sheets and closes his eyes and waits for the soreness to come back, because no matter how good he is, surely it isn’t good enough. Surely there will be more pain.

++

The next morning, Brendon curls into Dallon’s lap again, feeds from his carotid, wearing boxers and little else — clothes scrape on his skin like gravel in a wound, and while feeding makes it bearable it doesn’t make it comfortable. They have a show that night. Speaking still hurts — Brendon’s sung through infections, he knows his speaking voice is no indicator of his vocal ability — but he still doesn’t want to think about going out onstage.

“Stop thinking,” Dallon says, eyes still closed, and strokes a hand down Brendon’s chest. It’s almost too much, gentle and feather-light against his raw-yet-intact skin, and then Dallon curls his hand into a claw and rakes his nails down the center of Brendon’s chest, and Brendon arches hard, stifles a scream.

“What did I say,” Dallon says.

 _Be good_ , Brendon thinks.

“Good,” Dallon says. “Keep doing that.”

On stage that night, the crowd screams and lunges, and Brendon dances through the blinding pain, fades in and out and trusts muscle memory to do his work for him. Not for the first time — but for the first time in this particular way — he’s glad they don’t talk much onstage, and he throws himself into his dancing, tossing his neck back and pulling at the new skin over his bite, the last wound of his life, and accordingly slow to heal.

He’s sure the welts down his chest are visible from the pit. He doesn’t care. Honestly, in better times, he would be getting off on it, and maybe he still is, a little; it’s just tempered by shame, shame, shame, that he didn’t know better, that he couldn’t get away, that he _wants_ so badly. He wants to jump into the pit and splatter it red. He wants to do horrible, horrible things, and he wants to relish it like nothing else.

After the show, he lingers at the stage door and picks up a snack. That’s a horrible way to think of it, but Brendon falls into patterns easily.

She’s sweet. He doesn’t know her name, but she’s sweet, and she smiles, and she tastes vaguely floral, and nothing at all like Dallon, who tastes layered, like wine, and she is utterly unsatisfying. Brendon doesn’t drink enough to turn her — not even enough to kill her — but he does leave her, at the end of it, with the knowledge that nobody will ever believe her, which is almost worse. Maybe death would be kinder.

And then he comes back to the bus, slinks back on, freshly showered in the shitty motel room he shared with his food — _food_ , he can’t even think of her as a person anymore, just as sustenance — and Dallon _doesn’t care_ , Dallon gives him this utterly blank look.

“Come with me,” Dallon says, and steps off the bus, and when Brendon follows him, he pulls back one hand and slaps Brendon so that his head snaps back, and does it again and again until stolen blood is rising to his face, staining his cheeks luminous red.

“What was that for?” Brendon gasps out, eventually, one hand pressed to his face, the other on his knee as he curls over himself. He’s hard. Of course he’s hard. Dallon wants him hard and knows how to get it. Dallon always knows how to get what he wants.

“A reminder,” Dallon says, and Brendon doesn’t need to ask of what. It’s a mark, a brand, a territory line. _Mine_.

Then Dallon goes to his knees, there on the gravel, before the world and the God Brendon no longer believes in, and makes it so sweet and so good, so that Brendon is gasping and taking in great gulps of air. He lets Brendon pull his hair, and he digs his nails into Brendon’s hips — _so good_ — and he draws them down, leaving red raised lines, and when Brendon comes he swallows, and licks his red lips, and Brendon doesn’t know which way is up, and what way is good, and where hell is anymore, because everything is so much, and so confusing, and all he knows anymore is hunger and bloodlust and want and _need_.

Brendon knows whose he is, and Brendon knows what he wants, and Brendon is more lost than he has ever been before.

++

“Sarah,” Brendon rasps down the phone, after their next show. He hasn’t fed yet — he wants to talk to her now, now, now, before he can blunt his sharp edges, before he’s too sated to care about anything else, and he talks, and he tells her everything, and he knows Dallon is just outside, and he knows Dallon can hear through the door, because Dallon is a lot older than he looks, and Dallon has learned a great deal in those extra years, and he doesn’t care.

She makes a cursory effort — the beginnings of trying to understand; thank fuck, she does believe him, eventually — and then she says, “Brendon, I have to think,” and hangs up on him.

“I could’ve told you that would happen,” Dallon says, opening the door.

“You didn’t tell me _shit_ ,” Brendon says, snarling, because he is all animal instinct right now, peaky and hungry and furious, and he leaps at Dallon, and Dallon catches him by the throat and pins him to the wall beside the door in a single motion of incredible grace and terrifying tranquility.

“You didn’t _listen_ ,” Dallon says, eyes wide and blank. “Brendon, you never listen. That’s your trouble.”

And it’s true, it is, but it doesn’t matter, Brendon thinks, because this should never have happened, he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be _this_ , he shouldn’t _be_. He should be lying dead backstage in a pool of his own blood. He’s getting lightheaded from not breathing, but not as much as he used to when Sarah would loop a scarf around his neck and pull it a little too tight, and then a little more, and that’s not a great train of thought, because. He’s always been into this sort of thing, and that’s not what he wants right now, with Dallon watching and reprimanding him.

It wouldn’t be _good_.

But Dallon steps closer, lets Brendon wrap his legs around Dallon’s waist for leverage, and rolls his hips against Brendon’s.

“Come on,” he says, and pinches at Brendon’s thigh with his free hand — he still has a hand free, he’s holding Brendon up one-handed, and that’s hotter than Brendon wants to think about — making his hips jerk forward, and Dallon leans forward and bites gently, so gently, at the sensitive spot on Brendon’s neck, still healing, and Brendon fucking sinks his teeth into Dallon’s throat, glories in the rush of blood after so long and so much restraint.

It’s all getting tangled up, the hunger and the pain and the sex, and maybe that’s because Brendon’s always had a tough time sorting out the latter two, and now the former two are inextricable as well, but. He rocks his hips into Dallon’s, scrabbling for purchase on the smooth wall, and gasps for breath, and gasps for other, less pressing reasons, and Dallon pins him there with his body and takes his hand away and Brendon comes hard, white t-shirt smeared all over with blood, gulping air and making more noise than he should.

Dallon claps a hand over his mouth as Brendon shakes through it, one hand pressed open-palmed to the wall, the other pulling at his own hair, and smiles for the first time in a very long time with what looks like approval.

“Call her now,” he murmurs, and it takes Brendon a moment to understand what he’s saying. “Call Sarah and tell her everything, hmmm, about how good you feel, about how much more everything is, tell her that, Brendon.”

“And?” Brendon says, almost afraid to hear what comes next.

“And make her an offer,” Dallon says, tilting his head.

Brendon doesn’t want to do it. Brendon doesn’t know what he wants anymore.

He reaches for his phone.

++

Sarah flies out to meet them. It’s a hotel night, finally, which is good because it gets Kenneth out of the way and all the other people off the bus and ensures them at least a little privacy.

Dallon takes the sheets off the bed and takes down the shower curtain, spreading out the plastic on the bare mattress. “No reason we shouldn’t be comfortable,” he says to Sarah, who swallows and nods. Brendon’s seen her like this, but it’s always been acting.

“How do I do this?” he says to Dallon when she’s in the bathroom, showering off the smell of airport and processed air.

“You?” Dallon says. “Who said anything about you doing it?”

Brendon had assumed, unwisely apparently, that it would have been, but apparently — there’s an armchair in the corner, and Dallon points at it, and jerks his head to the side, and he goes. “You can watch,” he says, “but don’t touch,” and Brendon doesn’t want to, with a high-pitched petulance that rings through both of them, and Dallon’s eyes narrow, so. Brendon slides down in the chair and spreads his legs and keeps the sensation resonating, protesting the only way he knows how — by pushing further and further.

Dallon says, “I’m not going to punish you, Brendon. You can sit and you can be quiet and you can watch, and that’s all you’re getting,” and that’s enough to make Brendon tone it down a little, take the whine down a pitch and make it a little quieter.

Sarah steps out of the bathroom.

“This is going to be messy,” Dallon says, and she pulls off her shirt, strips down to underwear without a second thought. Brendon loves her more than anything. Brendon wants to taste her, bury his face between her thighs, but he also wants to turn his head and tear into her femoral artery. The conflicting urges make him feel hollow and awful.

Sarah climbs onto the bed. “How do we do this?” she asks, and Dallon frowns a little in that way he has, tilts his head.

“How do you want to do this?” he says. “Go out with a bang?”

And it’s not like she’s particularly averse. That’s something Brendon knows, something they’d talked about during that last phone call, but it just — it should be him, he thinks, if anybody’s going to do this — to _kill her_ — and before he can fully process how horrible that train of thought is, how fucking warped, Dallon’s kissing her, stroking his hands down her sides and licking into her mouth, sinking his fangs into her lower lip and swallowing her gasp of pain and surprise. She rocks up into it, flips them and straddles his lap, and Brendon can’t look away.

Dallon’s got a hand between her legs, long fingers working cleverly, and Sarah moans, long and low, and Brendon _wants_ , suddenly, more than anything, to be on the bed with them, to be touching her, to be caught between them. Dallon lies down, plastic creaking and crunching beneath him, and says, “Come up here, you.”

Sarah looks over at Brendon, eyes half-lidded, and gasps again when she catches his gaze. He can’t stop looking at them, at Dallon’s long body and Sarah’s angles and curves, and she shuffles up so that her thighs bracket Dallon’s face. Dallon’s hands on her hips leave white indentations — _that’ll bruise_ , Brendon thinks, and then _good, she likes that_ — and Dallon is licking at her, little flicks of his tongue interspersed with longer strokes, and he’s got one hand between her thighs, thumb working, and he turns his head with a quick movement —

— and there’s blood, god, so much of it, and Brendon _wants_ so _badly_ , to drink and to lick at the insides of Sarah’s thighs, and Dallon, finally, god, lies Sarah down on her back and beckons him over, and it tastes so good, like nothing else. Metallic and humid, and Sarah is still coming, still rocking through muscle spasms even as she bleeds out, and Brendon wants to come but he doesn’t want to miss a moment, even as Dallon opens his wrist and presses it to Sarah’s mouth. Brendon licks over the ragged bite mark, the texture of torn flesh, and watches as her skin knits back together, pink and new over bloodless muscle, and licks again to watch her squirm weakly.

Sarah’s throat is working. Brendon can’t tell if she’s swallowing or screaming. He wonders if it’s both. Bloodless, she is very pale and very cold; as she drinks, her body flushes and heats, and Brendon wants to kiss her throat, down her breastbone, but Dallon is there, and Dallon is watching, and Brendon wants to be good for this gift Dallon has given him. Brendon wants to deserve it.

So he sits, and he watches, and he waits, still hard, and the air stinks of blood, and he breathes deep.

++

For the first few days, Sarah screams in her sleep, sometimes, in the bunk that was Kenneth’s before Dallon — did what? scared him away? He’s still there at night, when they go onstage, when Sarah paces around the empty bus and waits for them to come back so she can hold Brendon down by the shoulders and feed, but he’s on edge, a little, less prone to coming over to Dallon’s side of the stage. _Prey_ , Brendon thinks, and can’t even bring himself to feel bad, now.

At night, he listens to Sarah’s breathing, preternaturally shallow, and wonders if Dallon sleeps at all, if he needs to. He wonders what he’ll be like when he’s Dallon’s age. He wonders how Dallon and Breezy get on, if Dallon turned Breezy, if he bites her the way he slips his teeth into Brendon’s neck or if it’s rougher.

Sarah stops screaming in her sleep. Tour winds down.

“He’s all yours,” Dallon says, one morning, and it’s not exactly that Brendon feels the bond slip — it doesn’t, blood ties and all that — but it thins a little, spreads out.

“He’s _ours_ ,” Sarah says, an edge in her voice, in the way she slips through the air, like never before.

“Ours,” Dallon says, head tilted, as if he’s considering it, as if all along he was just playing with his food, so to speak, and now he’s thinking of keeping it.

“Brendon,” Sarah orders, and he crosses the lounge to her, kneels at her feet. His head in her lap. “Ours,” she says again, and Dallon nods, and Brendon doesn’t want to run, not anymore.

He’s not lost anymore.


End file.
